Posted on 02/05/2022 7:46:20 AM PST by The_Media_never_lie
I would have never, in a million years, thought that Greenville would go down the tubes like that.
That’s such a great screed and spot on
I used to go to Asheville on business a bit and I witnessed a drumbeat march once protesting something about abortion in NC legislature
It was pretty big ground at least 5-10,000
Hippies amd bleary kids and lesbos....man Asheville is a lesbo capital
Drum beating and speeches
The left who usually don’t have kids or not many always flock to nice bucolic places and ruin them....the gays pioneer the Great Trek followed by now hipsters buying tall and skinnys
Tall and skinnys will be viewed as Sears craftsman prairie homes once were 1895-1940 but not as cool by a long shot
Such a plethora of late Xers down to Gen Z soaked in leftist indoctrination and mores
Of boomers like me are the last redoubt age demographic you know it’s a problem
It all depends on if the kids are raised and parents push back on shit they are brainwashed with
None of my five from 15-33 are lefties...
Far from it
Two including a daughter are bugaloo foot soldiers in waiting by their account
I was a left libertarian Southern style early to late 70s for disclosure
Great post partner
I think a simple solution, one that no politician would require. Is to require a minimum number of positions are filled with locals. Then those same politicians start working with the local school districts implement the programs to accommodate the opportunities. All the way up through college. Have a program with USC and Clemson that creates a pipeline.
I think it would be interesting to see how quick these companies would hesitate in buying up the land and slamming up a facility, if they had those kind of requirements.
It was a nice place to live in the 70’s.
“How it stacks up with Gatlinburg Tennessee?”
Gatlinburg is tiny, area-wise, and cannot grow because it is entirely surrounded by steep terrain on three sides, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park on the fourth. It has always been, and still is, strictly a little tourist town. Hardly anyone actually lives in Gatlinburg proper. People who retire to the area or buy vacation cabins are left with having to buy homes in the area (Wears Valley, Townsend area, etc.).
The Gatlinburg area hasn’t been infiltrated by lefties and kooks and old hippies like Asheville has. Sevier County is still solidly red, with almost 80% of the vote going to Trump in 2020, whereas Asheville/Buncombe County has turned blue.
Also, Asheville was always a town where people actually lived and worked and had more going on than just the tourism industry. (Again, Gatlinburg has nothing but tourism.)
There is considerable traffic when tourists arrive in droves to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area during peak summer season and “leaf season” in the fall, but it’s fairly dead in winter (although some locals from Knoxville do go up there in December for the Christmas lights and shopping).
Pigeon Forge has always been known as a tourist trap with mini-golf, then water parks, now Dollywood and outlet malls and more. There are plenty of tourists who go there and stay there, spending the whole time in the malls and various attractions, never setting foot in the Park. It’s known for attracting more “redneck” type tourists — some stopping by there on their way to or from “The Redneck Riviera” (Destin area).
Anyone deciding to buy a retirement home or vacation cabin in the area should really do their homework if it’s a new development. Over the years, there have been some awful scams, with developers promising roads, water and electricity connections, etc., that never came to pass. The buyers were stuck with steep plots way out in the sticks with no way to get there, or any water or electricity. Better to go with a house already built, or at least a lot already on a road with utility connections.
A bunch of retirement and vacation homes burnt to the ground during the terrible wildfires of 2016 when we had a severe dry spell, but that is a rare thing. The Smokes just barely miss qualifying for rainforest status, and get their name from the humidity haze that often hangs over them.
Believe it not, there has been a mafia presence in and around Gatlinburg (old school Italian mafia) since about the 1970s. Sevier County was dry as a bone back then (the only place you could buy a drink was up at the Ski Lodge after paying a dollar to become a card-carrying private club member — legal loophole), and they were wanting to horn in on Archie the Bootpegger’s highly profitable business. They branched out into running some scams (see above) and can be vicious within the “family” but as long as you don’t get mixed up with them, you’d hardly notice they are around.
Sevier County is still technically dry, but now you can buy alcohol in more and more places owing to weird local ordinances (but never “of a Sunday” — anything “bad” you can do is considered a thousand times bad if you do it “of a Sunday”, as in “they was playing cards, and of a Sunday, too!”):
https://www.thesmokies.com/is-gatlinburg-dry/
Back in the day, it was fun to follow the antics of Sheriff Townsend vs Archie the Bootlegger in the Sevier County Times. The Sheriff was always on Archie’s tail, tracking him down, occasionally made him a guest of the county, but of course never shut him down. Everyone figured Townsend was in Archie’s pocket and it was all just entertaining local theater. And Archie provided great service, according to local gossip. You could get your choice of hooch delivered to your door anytime of the day or night.
Lately, there have been more and more retirees flocking in, not to the Smokies, but to the lakes around here. The lake retirement communities are in what are still rural conservative areas and it’s easy driving distance to the Smokies. Lots and homes more affordable, too. Personally, I don’t care for TVA fake lakes, but lots of people love the lake life around here.
Agreed. :-(
Yeah. Right...
NY State used to lead the world as an incubator for industry and manufacturing and patents, as well as a reasonable dairy and orchard industry. (It’s a Wonderful Life, Kodak, IBM, Dupont, Hooker, Corning, etc. etc.)
Now, NY bans fracking and makes it impossible for business to thrive.
NY has decided the key to its future is to grow hops and make craft beers, and to be a tourist state populated with illegal immigrants.
Good luck making that work.
I recently visited Asheville, my first visit there. I found the people to be unfriendly.
Las Vegas has a large Hispanic working class. That is a big part it’s crime problem. Crime is going to go up along with “a ton of Hispanic Immigration”. Wait until MS13 gets there.
Eventually Nashville will eat Tennessee, the way Las Vegas ate Nevada and Denver ate Colorado. It is just a matter of time.
Only because of the corrupt politicians that are continually elected to ayate office. They’re just as bad as anyone, if not worse, in DC. And the ones at the state and county level do it while sitting next to you at the local diner or bbq joint.
It is not population based. It is a question of rural vs urban.
Rural people are independent and thus Conservative.
City people depend on government and become liberal.
Before WWII, most Americans lived on the farm. They lived away from cities and were conservative. 75 years on now, most people live in cities. It is natural to be a liberal city dweller. As cities become more packed and the countryside empties out, most people will become some version of liberal.
It is inevitable.
Gatlinburg is tiny, just 4000 people.
Asheville hasn’t voted for a GOP president since 2000.
Gatlinburg always votes for a GOP president. We are talking 3:1 margin or more.
There is no comparison between the artsy fartsy, liberal hippy town of Asheville, and the conservative tourist mountain town of Gatlinburg.
In a land far far away, in a time long long ago, I used to hunt Coulwhee, Slyvan, Ashville for white tail and turkey.
Seems so long ago...
5.56mm
I blame the voters, not the politicians. The liberal voters are the ones who re-elect the corrupt liberal politicians and give them all of their power. Look at the shut downs, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates in liberal cities. Not a peep from the liberal voters. They lap it up like candy. Obey is the order of the day among liberals. Liberals can’t get enough government. They want to be oppressed.
Can’t argue that. And will not argue that. You’re 100% correct.
However, the liberal voters wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the corrupt and greedy politicians, selling everybody and their mother out, to the next big business or corporation.
The ones that promise jobs. But the jobs never come for the locals. Maybe a few here and there, but most will go to transplants and folks that move with the company.
So many states are going through this. Texas and Rick Perry started all of this bullsh*t. And there’s no way he’ll ever deal with the consequences of these policies. He’s not being forced out of a home that he’s lived in fro decades because the property taxes, inexplicably, start going through the roof.
I’ll give you a great example. The movie industry in Georgia. Most folks on the street DO NOT WANT IT. But, the politicians and the Governor give the industry $800million a year in tax breaks/incentives, whatever. And the industry gets to take advantage of the state’s Right To Work laws, so no forced union wages.
Have the citizens of Georgia ever been allowed to vote on this? NOPE. And this, and so many other things are done in secret. Then they announce these things like they’re saving the world. And everyone hates them for it. It just started up again with Rivian electric cars buying up 2000 acres of farm land for a plant that might build cars that no one buys. And there’s Kemp, talking about 7500 jobs. Ain’t no way there will be anything close to that. And the high paying ones will go to someone from out of state. Kia pumps out 300k a year. Its plant has 3000 employees and people buy those cars.
Good report! Glad to know it is sane. Congested, but sane.
Asheville owes it’s architectural time warp to the Great Gatsby generation and the Great Depression.
Aside from the Biltmore house the majority of the remaining old buildings are relics of the tourist, 2nd home boom of the 1920s which was killed for decades when the market crashed.
The city did not finish paying off its Depression era bonds until the early 80s which meant it didn’t have the money for 1960s urban rehab thus the old buildings were saved from that fate.
Up through the 70s the city relied on fall leaf tourism as its major draw and still wore the mountain hillbilly image.
The current gentrification of old buildings started across from the Vance monument at Pack Square around the mid 80s. (The bastards tore down the granite obelisk at the square this past year because it memorialized the Confederate Governor of NC).
Wow, interesting stuff. Thanks. I’m fairly new to the area. I started the process of moving from NY about 15 years ago and actually got here (to Greenville County SC) 11 years ago.
I guess one more reason I don’t get Asheville is that I’m color blind and I can’t even see the color changes in the leaves! lol
I do appreciate the older architecture though. Greenville, as a whole, is kind of a mess in that regard, though that is changing over time.
More and more, I actually enjoy going for a day trip to Hendersonville over Asheville if we’re going to head up that way.
Bob Jones used to have kids witnessing downtown 2 years ago...4 of them I think...
.
Only 4.
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